A brand new location of McDonald's opened near my campus. For their grand opening, they had free small coffee all day and a buy one get one free deal on breakfast sandwiches.

They continued that for a week. Now it is free coffee, but not the sandwiches and people are very upset about that. I'm not sure how long a location could stay open and run a profit with a deal like that.

A brand new location of McDonald's opened near my campus. For their grand opening, they had free small coffee all day and a buy one get one free deal on breakfast sandwiches.

They continued that for a week. Now it is free coffee, but not the sandwiches and people are very upset about that. I'm not sure how long a location could stay open and run a profit with a deal like that.

A brand new location of McDonald's opened near my campus. For their grand opening, they had free small coffee all day and a buy one get one free deal on breakfast sandwiches.

They continued that for a week. Now it is free coffee, but not the sandwiches and people are very upset about that. I'm not sure how long a location could stay open and run a profit with a deal like that.

Oh, for the love of Pete.

I worked in a grocery store that had a Starbucks in it. For a long time they had a deal where, if you used your store club card, the system would keep track of your purchases and your 10th drink was free. There was a gov't office building within walking distance so a lot of people would come and get coffee at about 7:30am and then again on their lunch breaks. They ended up getting a free drink every Friday at lunch, pretty good deal! After awhile (I don't know how long, the deal started before I worked there) someone in either Starbucks' or the store's corporate office decided to end the deal. We were all bummed but it happens.

You would have thought someone issued a letter specifically to the gov't employees and told them all to go jump off a cliff and take their money with them. They were outraged! They made sure every single Starbucks employee knew how mad they were, how unfair it was, how greedy the company was, and that they wouldn't be back. And they all got in their cars and drove several miles to the next nearest Starbucks rather than literally walk a few doors down to buy from ours.

That lasted a couple of weeks, maybe a month. When their boycott didn't have the financial impact they'd hoped would restore the free deal, and they realized they were not only paying for 10 coffees a week anyway but also gas, they came back. And complained about it again every Friday for a few more weeks.

A brand new location of McDonald's opened near my campus. For their grand opening, they had free small coffee all day and a buy one get one free deal on breakfast sandwiches.

They continued that for a week. Now it is free coffee, but not the sandwiches and people are very upset about that. I'm not sure how long a location could stay open and run a profit with a deal like that.

Oh, for the love of Pete.

I worked in a grocery store that had a Starbucks in it. For a long time they had a deal where, if you used your store club card, the system would keep track of your purchases and your 10th drink was free. There was a gov't office building within walking distance so a lot of people would come and get coffee at about 7:30am and then again on their lunch breaks. They ended up getting a free drink every Friday at lunch, pretty good deal! After awhile (I don't know how long, the deal started before I worked there) someone in either Starbucks' or the store's corporate office decided to end the deal. We were all bummed but it happens.

You would have thought someone issued a letter specifically to the gov't employees and told them all to go jump off a cliff and take their money with them. They were outraged! They made sure every single Starbucks employee knew how mad they were, how unfair it was, how greedy the company was, and that they wouldn't be back. And they all got in their cars and drove several miles to the next nearest Starbucks rather than literally walk a few doors down to buy from ours.

That lasted a couple of weeks, maybe a month. When their boycott didn't have the financial impact they'd hoped would restore the free deal, and they realized they were not only paying for 10 coffees a week anyway but also gas, they came back. And complained about it again every Friday for a few more weeks.

I follow a local news station on facebook, and occasionally they will post a links to coupons for various local businesses.

Every now and then, to access the coupon, you have to download an app on a smartphone, or text in for a coupon code. Oh, the comments section blew up with righteous indignation: What about those of us without smartphones?!?!? What about those of us who don't text?!?!?

Well, I guess you can't access this coupon for $1 off a chicken sandwich, then. Better luck next time.

I follow a local news station on facebook, and occasionally they will post a links to coupons for various local businesses.

Every now and then, to access the coupon, you have to download an app on a smartphone, or text in for a coupon code. Oh, the comments section blew up with righteous indignation: What about those of us without smartphones?!?!? What about those of us who don't text?!?!?

Well, I guess you can't access this coupon for $1 off a chicken sandwich, then. Better luck next time.

I don't have a smartphone and I don't text. Having to "like" a Facebook page to get a coupon annoys me to high heaven. So I do without the coupons, freebies and contests. My lack of modern technology is my choice and I live with it and accept the limitations. I will still go to the store to buy item X, even if I don't have the 50 cents off. I consider that a good trade off since my cell phone costs are $100 per year (I have an antique flip phone with no bells and whistles).

Every now and then, to access the coupon, you have to download an app on a smartphone, or text in for a coupon code. Oh, the comments section blew up with righteous indignation: What about those of us without smartphones?!?!? What about those of us who don't text?!?!?

Well, I guess you can't access this coupon for $1 off a chicken sandwich, then. Better luck next time.

This reminds me of something similar.

A group of people started the Western Neighborhood Traffic Committee to address problems w/ traffic on the west end of my neighborhood. There was a highway exit/entrance/overpass; lots of crowded shopping areas w/ lots of double parking.

The guy who was organizing it replied in a very nice and clever way, essentially saying, "We have started this group for these specific reasons. Please feel free to start your own Eastern Neighborhood Traffic Committee, and spend your own energy on those aspects of it."

One aspect of my job is that I input recipes into our database for two main websites. The X style recipes tends to be fairly straight forward in nature. The Z-style recipes are usually a fairly long and involved and have multiple facets. Obviously the longer the recipe, the longer it takes to go into the system. Normally batches are between 4-10 recipes. Again, more recipes take a bit longer time. Generally, I have a rule that if there is a batch of recipes that need to go into the system I need to have at least a week to put them in. (In case of meetings or other parts of my job that need priority)

I am working on a few X recipes this afternoon because I was in a meeting all morning. I get an email this afternoon at 1PM from a contact on the Z side. "Happy Friday. Hope your week went well. We have a few Z-style recipes from Event and we would like to upload to database. Is it possible to upload the below recipes by Tuesday, 5/13?" I look below and there is a link to a downloadable file. Odd, since that is how she sends me images. She usually sends recipes in a word doc. I open up the file and there are over 60 recipes.

I sent her a note back* and told her that I hope she has a different list because NO, there is no way that I can get 60 recipes - many are long or in need of tweaking to fit into the database - up by next week. Nevermind within 2 days.

*I let my supervisor know what is happening. We chatted that I had already given this the folks in Z-group my general time frame for getting recipes up. And that I told them that it wasn't happening. I am also going to let my boss know so that the Z-style director doesn't try to get me into trouble.

Oh yeah... and I'm the technical nerd/geek in those meetings. I dread the words "We have an idea."

So it's true! When I read Dilbert comic strips I remembered the occasional joke of a giant hammer smashing down on the head of someone who said 'I have an idea'. Not working in a tech corporation, that humor flew over my head.